On behalf of the American Federation of Government Employees, I strongly urge you to oppose amendment #4 authored by Representative Mick Mulvaney (R-SC) to H.R. 152, the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act, which would offset $17 billion in emergency funding by requiring across-the-board funding cuts of 1.63% for all agencies. Reductions in Federal agency funding over the last few years have dangerously harmed the ability of the nation’s dedicated and patriotic public servants to provide crucial services to the American people.

Federal agencies face the threat of sequestration later this year, and are already preparing to reduce their budgets by eight percent (8%). Further, in the short term, the two month delay in sequestration has been paid for in part by $12 billion in discretionary spending cuts. An additional mindless, across-the board cut of 1.6% to these already strained agency budgets will make a bad situation even worse.

Federal workers across the nation work as meat and poultry inspectors, border patrol agents, veterans’ hospital nurses and doctors, social security claims representatives, correctional officers in federal prisons, environmental scientists and engineers, and hundreds of others. The services they provide are not abstract and the funding necessary to pay for these services should not be done in an irrational and arbitrary across-the-board manner. The House of Representatives has an obligation to determine what functions it wants the Executive Branch to perform and at what levels, then to provide the funding to pay to implement their determinations.

In summary, I strongly urge you to vote NO on the Mulvaney Amendment 44 to H.R.152.